1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an ink-jet printing apparatus for a printer, facsimile, copy machine and so forth. More particularly, the invention relates to an ink-jet printing apparatus which can stack ejected printing media in sequential order of ejection.
2. Description of the Related Art
Among ink-jet printers, there are some printers of the type sequentially stacking printing papers ejected after printing on an ejected paper stacker. In this type of the ink-jet printer, the ejected paper is stacked on the already stacked immediately preceding printing paper with grazing the printed surface of the latter. Therefore, an ink on the preceding printing paper is not yet dried, the printed surface of the preceding printed paper and the back surface of the currently ejected paper are stained by the ink.
An ink-jet printer which can improve the problem set forth above, has been disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 1-145153, for example. FIG. 9 is a sectional front elevation of a paper ejecting mechanism of the ink-jet printer disclosed in the above-identified publication. The paper ejecting mechanism has a pair of rail members 26a and 26b opposing to each other and extending in parallel in an ejecting direction of a printing paper 27 on an ejected paper stacker 25. The rail members 26a and 26b pivoted in directions to approach the tip ends thereof with each other and located at an ejected paper receiving position as shown by a solid line in FIG. 9. The rail members 26a and 26b are pivotable in directions to move the tip ends away from each other to be placed at a paper releasing position as shown by a two dotted line in FIG. 9.
In the conventional ink-jet printer constructed as set forth above, a driving force of a motor is transmitted to the rail members 26a and 26b via a platen support body to pivotally driving the rail members 26a and 26b between the ejected paper receiving position and the paper releasing position. In order to achieve this, a complicate construction becomes necessary. On the other hand, the rail members 26a and 26b are required sufficient length in order to support the overall length from the front end to the rear end of the edge portion of the printing paper 27. This can be a hazard for down-sizing of the paper ejecting mechanism.